Foreword
When I consider the universe, I see an order, intelligence and such complexity yet perfection. I find it incredibly humbling.
All of this continues in its perfect complexity whether we do or not, yet we live as though life can only work out if we control how it unfolds. When something differs from what we expected, we become frustrated, resist it, or try harder to force the outcome we imagined. We give our own understanding so much authority, even though it can only ever account for such a small part of what is.
Seeing a bigger picture allows us to place ourselves in context. We exist within it and in relation to one another. Who we are, what has shaped us, and what we can contribute become clearer when we understand those connections. Understanding ourselves includes understanding what we are part of, and the role we can play within it.
We can learn to trust life more. We can pay attention to what comes, recognize what feels meaningful to give ourselves to, and do the work it asks of us while remaining open to how it unfolds. That openness also asks us to leave room for something we have not thought of yet. An idea needs space to arise before we can choose to act on it.
My own questions about life and the universe began in childhood and eventually led me to quantum physics. Learning about a physical world so different from the one we ordinarily perceive made me question my own experience. Those questions led me toward manifestation and spiritual teachings.
Learning has been a constant in my life. For the past decade, I have been studying intensively, following my questions through quantum physics, spiritual teachings, ancient Chinese philosophy, psychological sciences, and much more. Love of learning is also one of my top five character strengths, something I will return to later on. One question leads to another and it helps me examine how we think, feel, learn, and act, and recognize practices that can make a difference in everyday life.
For every topic, I wanted to understand the research, what the findings showed, and what nuances or unanswered questions remained. I have no illusion that science can explain the greater part of what there is to understand about life and existence. But I wanted to understand what it could tell us. I needed enough understanding to think things through for myself, food to philosophize. Before moving on from a subject, I would keep exploring until I felt I could make at least some sense of whatever questions might come up, to a level of being able to at least come up with theories. It has been part of how I came to understand what I share here.
Over time, that exploration became faith, and it has changed my life entirely. I wake in the morning resting in the feeling of gratitude for guidance and support. I trust that guidance. And as I have become less occupied with controlling how life unfolds, opportunities keep arising. I experience life as continually offering something I can respond to. The spiritual questions, the science, and eventually the personal experiences, together shaped what I know.
And that’s this: when we apply what we understand about life and the universe to the way we live ours, it all comes down to one thing:
replacing default with intention.
Default is what you do without choosing it, repeating what was done before or what others do. It’s what remains when no choice was made. We absorb ideas about what we should want, how we should work, and what makes us worthy. We can spend years following them without considering whether they reflect reality, what we value, or who we are. Intention is consciously reevaluating everything, and committing to a direction.
Getting to know our defaults is part of self-realization. It involves learning to understand your essence beyond the image you have learned to maintain, and allowing that understanding to become part of how you live. Your strengths can help you recognize what you naturally bring. Exploring your purpose helps you understand what you value and what you feel called to contribute. Your purpose helps you shape and test your intentions as you move through life.
This is how I understand manifesting on the scale of life: giving expression to who you are through what you give yourself to. Your strengths, purpose, and willpower come together in the doing. Dedication means returning to it, practicing, learning, and continuing when things become difficult, while trusting that the outcome is not simply yours to determine, and accepting it regardless.
Part of surrendering to life in that way is allowing room for spontaneity. When we fill the day with plans and move from one thing to the next, our attention is already occupied. Even practices intended to support us can become another schedule to obey. Leaving space and remaining open allow life to reach us through an idea, an unexpected encounter, or a sense of direction. We give ourselves the opportunity to recognize something meaningful to follow, including when it differs from what we had planned.
Over time, this made me question what we are keeping from the world through the way we organize society and work. What might people create or contribute if more of their attention were available to what arises in them? How much care, creativity, and understanding never gets to become part of our shared lives? We have these incredible minds. Giving them room could make things possible for others that we would never have known to plan in advance.
I think there is so much more beauty possible in the life we create together. Helping others recognize what is available to them matters to me in itself. But I also want to be part of opening up more of what becomes possible between us when we live that way.
Our lives are connected in that way. We learn from others, receive their care, and benefit from what people before us have understood and created. What we have received can become something we offer. Our own development can help someone else recognize a possibility, understand themselves differently, or find the confidence to begin. That gives us a responsibility to take seriously what we bring into one another’s lives.
At the scale of a lifetime, replacing default with intention means exploring the direction you live by and what you contribute through it. In everyday life, it becomes very concrete: listening before defending yourself, noticing when you are about to say yes or no, beginning something meaningful, or leaving space before the day fills itself. I move between those scales throughout this writing, bringing a larger idea toward something you can recognize and practice in your own life.
And all of this takes place now. Finding meaning and satisfaction in what you are doing is living your path. Its meaning does not depend on a future achievement. The life we are exploring how to live is already happening.
My intention is to help make those connections clear: how knowing yourself, doing the work, trusting, and remaining open can become part of an authentic, happy, and meaningful life. Replacing default with intention is how I bring that understanding into practice, in the way we live each day.
Even with that trust, I can still fall back into old habits. For a long time, managing everything myself, caring for my children, and making sure everyone was taken care of were closely tied to my sense of worth. Uncertainty can still bring back the impulse to take control. There are periods when I practice less of what I describe here, or find it difficult to act on something I know.
A line quoted in After the Ecstasy, the Laundry returns to me in those moments:
“When one no longer sees, one can at least still know.”
It takes me back to a summer’s day when, having finished reading a book, a complete sense of oneness with everything came over me. My faith became a profound truth I had experienced. Reading this line brings me straight back to that connection. It often brings me to tears, because the sense of belonging is so intense. From that place, I feel able to face whatever life brings. That connection is the deepest source of strength I know, and the best fuel for perseverance when life is difficult.
I think that is why I wrote this book. I never actually decided to write it. At some point, when I had made enough space in my mind and my life, it just started coming, and the flow became a flood. Day after day, I woke up with answers, connections between things I had learned, questions I needed to ask, and a sense of what needed to be said. A map of how it all belonged together began to take shape. Within weeks, it was all in writing. In my Google Drive, that is. And as you will read in the first chapter, I can no longer allow it to stay there.
There is so much understanding available to us that can make life easier, happier, and at times blissful. Yet many of us may never encounter it, or recognize how it could become part of our own lives. Having brought together what I have learned, I can now consciously choose what to do with it: make it useful to others. That connects this work to my purpose of showing others their beauty and strength and thereby setting off a chain reaction.
The opportunity to become one of those people whose eyes radiate bliss is available to you. So let’s go.